Social networks filled with laughter and derision on Sunday, in response to the bizarre claim by Donald Trump’s aide, Kellyanne Conway, that the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, had not lied to the nation about the size of the crowd at Friday’s inauguration, but merely presented “alternative facts.”

Conway introduced the concept when pressed by Chuck Todd of NBC News to explain why the president had asked Spicer to use his first appearance in the White House briefing room, on Saturday, to falsely claim that the National Mall was filled to capacity during Trump’s inaugural address on Friday.

With a jaw-dropping disregard for objective reality, Spicer had berated the White House press corps for reporting, accurately, that Trump’s own estimate that up to 1.5 million people were on the mall was wrong.

Since much of what Spicer said in support of his case was demonstrably false, Conway’s phrase was widely mocked.

Administration's 2nd day, and Conway came up with a phrase that could be its epitaph. "Alternative facts" will stay with Trump forever. https://t.co/wDi5QACPfs

The brazenness of this attempt by the new White House to present entirely false assertions about objective reality as equally valid alternatives to factual information reported by the media is stunning. But given how important accurate statistics and evidence from the United States government are to science, the economy and our society, it is worth laying out clearly that Spicer’s claims about the inauguration are contradicted by evidence available to anyone with the power of sight.

“We know that from the platform where the president was sworn in to Fourth Street holds about 250,000 people,” Spicer told the press corps on Saturday. “From Fourth Street to the media tent is about another 220,000, and from the media tent to the Washington Monument, another 250,000 people.”

“All of this space was full when the president took the oath of office,” Spicer claimed.

Leaving aside that this would put the size of the crowd at 720,000, not 1.5 million, photographic evidence, webcam images and video shot by reporters who observed the address from a media tent at the back of the crowd show conclusively that the area of the mall around the tent and in front of the Washington Monument was largely empty.

First, about 40 minutes before Trump was sworn in, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Binyamin Appelbaum, compared an image taken from the Washington Monument with a photograph from the same vantage point on the day of former President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, in 2009, which showed a much smaller crowd this year.

Second, as the Reuters photo editor Jim Bourg noted on Facebook, the area at the rear of the mall did not fill in much during the event, as seen in an image taken from the top of the Washington monument by a Reuters staff photographer, Lucas Jackson, at 12:01:18 p.m. right after Trump was sworn in.

Third, a timelapse video of the mall, created by PBS Newshour using footage recorded from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. by a pool camera atop the Washington Monument, shows that the area was not filled to capacity at any stage during the event.

Fourth, Raj Mathai, a news anchor for the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area, recorded video during Trump’s address which showed that the area in front of the media tent, at 12th Street, was largely empty.

In another clip, streamed live to Periscope by Mathai just after Trump spoke, as Jackie Evancho sang the national anthem at 12:25 p.m., it is clear that there were hardly any spectators in the area in front of the media tent.

Fifth, readers who are loathe to accept as genuine even time-stamped video posted on Twitter by a reporter can consult a truly objective source: images of the mall and the area around the Washington Monument recorded during Trump’s address by a webcam mounted on the Smithsonian Castle’s north flag tower.

A screenshot from a webcam showing the National Mall at 12:15 p.m. on Friday, as Donald Trump gave his inaugural address.

Photo: Earthcam

A webcam view of the media tent in front of the Washington Monument during Donald Trump’s inaugural address on Friday.

Photo: Earthcam

Earthcam, a site that makes those images available online in cooperation with the National Park Service, later posted archived video of the live stream from Friday on Facebook, which gives skeptics the opportunity to examine the evidence for themselves.

That archived video, which is without sound, shows the mall during the entire event. Here is a portion of that video recorded during the last three minutes of Trump’s address, beginning at 12:15 p.m. on Friday.

(Visual clues confirm that the video does indeed show the scene on the mall at 12:15 p.m., matching the time the live stream began on Facebook. At that stage in his speech, after Trump said, “We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it,” the pool camera used in television coverage cut away to two shots of spectators during a pause for applause. By enlarging the Earthcam video from Facebook above, it is possible to match the frames visible on the giant monitors on the mall with that part of a time-stamped copy of the live broadcast.)

What the visual evidence shows, then, is that even if we accept Spicer’s unsourced claims about the capacity of the mall, large parts of the section from 4th Street to the media tent at 12th Street, which he said holds 220,000 people, were unfilled, and the section from the media tent to the Washington Monument, “another 250,000,” was nearly empty. So even if the front section did hold 250,000 people, the total crowd would appear to have been closer to 400,000 than 1.5 million.

As part of the effort to assuage his boss’s bruised ego, Spicer also falsely told reporters that it was harder for spectators to get through security and on to the mall than in previous years, a claim which was debunked by the Secret Service. He then said that the white floor coverings, which made the absence of people more visible in photos, had never been used before (they were used in 2013, at Obama’s better-attended inauguration).

Finally, Spicer presented reporters with incorrect statistics about the volume of traffic on the D.C. subway system on Friday, saying that it was far higher than it had been on the day of Obama’s second inauguration, in 2013, when it was, in fact, far lower.

While Spicer and Conway have taken much of the flak for these whoppers over the past 24 hours, it is important to keep in mind that they are simply covering for the primary fabulist in the White House: Donald Trump.

Trump furnished a clear example of this on Saturday, just before Spicer appeared to confront the press, when he falsely claimed during a speech at the CIA that the rain had stopped and the sun had come out as he delivered his inaugural address the day before to what “looked like a million, a million and a half people.”

That surely marks the first time a president of the United States has lied about the weather at a public event he attended alongside hundreds of thousands of other people just 24 hours earlier.

White House aides who spoke to The New York Times on Sunday said that Spicer’s desperate effort to contest observable reality was prompted by Trump’s own insecurity over the relatively small crowd. “Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day,” The Times reported, “after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009.”

Aides told The Times that Trump was miffed by the tweet from their colleague Binyamin Appelbaum, which was shared more than 100,000 times on the social network that the new president seems to rely on for reassurance and approval.

What Americans, and the media, have yet to fully absorb is that the president of the United States is now a man who managed to get 62 million votes, 46 percent of the total, despite a life-long record of making one demonstrably false claim after another. Having spent the five years before he ran for office gaining support by peddling the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, Trump then went on the campaign trail and told voters that he had seen non-existent video of “thousands and thousands” of Arab-Americans cheering in New Jersey as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001.

When pressed to explain that false claim by reporters, including George Stephanopoulos of ABC and Katy Tur of NBC, Trump simply doubled down.

Although that falsehood was, briefly, a central concern for the media in late 2015, Trump just refused to admit that he was wrong, even after it became apparent that there was no such footage, for the good reason that mass celebrations had not taken place.

In the end, Trump managed to wriggle off the hook for that lie, as he did for the lies about Obama’s birth certificate being fake, mainly because his opponents for the Republican nomination, many of whom are now in government alongside him, refused to challenge him on lies about Democrats or Muslims that were, and still are, popular with their voters.

Trump, like much of the Republican base, relies on entirely skewed sources of information for his news, and has yet to pay any serious price for embracing conspiracy theories and treating internet rumors as facts. His reckoning with stubborn reality is long overdue, but it might not come until those around him stop shielding him from the truth.

It is worth noting, too, that Trump is the first president to rely so heavily on a social network for information, and the rise of social media has had a profound impact on the ease with which fiction can be mistaken for fact.

That’s not to say that the willingness of partisans to believe false information is at all new. A British clergyman, C.H. Spurgeon, observed in 1859, that rumors seemed to spread more easily than facts. “It is well said in the old proverb, ‘a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on,'” Spurgeon wrote. More than a century before that, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift noted in his 1710 essay on “the Art of Political Lying,” that “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

Still, while lowering the barrier to who can broadcast accounts and analysis of news events to a global audience has added so much to our understanding of the world, it has also made it far easier for junk information, misunderstandings and even deliberately false claims to circulate widely.

A perfect illustration of how difficult it now is to correct false information is the number of Trump supporters who responded to the clear overhead visual evidence of empty spaces at the back of the mall by sharing alternative views, taken from the front of the crowd at the Capitol, without any awareness that they were captured on telephoto lenses that foreshorten and distort the distance between objects.

By Sunday afternoon, a graphic comparing a distorted telephoto image to more clear shots taken from overhead had spread as far as Brazil.

Since the camera wasn’t “in line of sight” with the podium, it shows the front-to-rear of each section, by being to the side, so telephoto foreshortening isn’t an issue it seems. If correct, then any shots – like above – showing whitespace closer to the podium than the one right in front of the back tent are bogus.

Is there any doubt about the guy’s ability to draw a crowd? He just won the election with huge crowds at his rallies. That’s when it mattered. Why would the ordinary Americans that voted for Trump trek to Washington in the winter for a done thing? They already got what they wanted. They’re happy to stay home. Now they want him to act and he is. The Trump phenomenon is about taking action on real problems. People flooded Obama’s inauguration for the show and the first black president and he looks good in a suit and so on. And what good did that do us?
Trump doesn’t like the focus on “his crowd is less than Obama’s” and he’s going to say something. Who cares? The alternative facts thing was a very small part of an interview in which Kellyanne Conway was trying to talk about more serious things and the interviewer wouldn’t drop this petty subject.
People focused on these issues don’t actually care about America. They want to fight over this stuff instead of trying to solve problems for Americans.

The crowd size is no big deal, but Trump thought it was important enough to have his press sec spend time in his first press meeting telling lies about it. Conway lied as well, she only wanted to talk about other things after she was embarrased.

Why is this even up for discussion? Seems like a media inspired, hate filled story. Why wouldn’t Obama’s inauguration have been followed by more people? His was an historic election. But his promises of Hope have left us all without hope.
Stop inciting violence with your stories.

This is up for discussion, because Trump, Spicer, Priebus, and Conway all decided to make inaugural attendance an issue, along with their threats to the media, and our new, Conway-inspired, word-of-the-day, alternative facts. Get ready, joan, Trump is again accusing illegal immigrants for his loss of the popular vote, which you may read and hear in the real news. I hope you can control your hate and violence.

Inciting violence? You have drawn a bizarre conclusion from this article. Can you elaborate? The new President Trump is staking his credibility on his ridiculously false claims. Why would you gloss over that? Are there any statements for which you would hold him to account?

There is nothing illegal about fake facts. Their use is merely an application of psychological research. Fake facts work, so they will be on the strategy menu of every election from now on. It’s a bit like lip synching of singers. Once it was considered appalling, now it’s commonly done.

Fake fact is an oxymoron. Nothing illegal about fake facts? Try telling that to a cop next time you are stopped for speeding and you swear you were 5 MPH under the speed limit, or the IRS when you file taxes like you’re Trump. A fake fact is equal to lying, and there should be moral and ethical consequences, if not legal repercussions.

“O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?'”

Predicted rain. Major protests planned. Is this what the intercept will continue to focus on? Who cares except for the LOSERS. it’s all the media and democrats wanted to talk about. Forget the issues it’s all size that matters. Never talk policy or twist the words bring everyone together as some code other than fuck you washington. This will be the reality show president thanks to the 14% approval rated dying main stream media and…
The intercept. Hooray!

The story is NOT the crowd size, it’s the lies told by Spicer in his first official news conference- he could have said “the size of the crowd doesn’t matter”, but he didn’t!! He told a demonstrable lie (AKA an “alternative fact”)

Yes it is about the media and still trying to delegitimization trump. 12 tsa chike points taking hours to get through and 1500 people per hour could get through. The pictures from his swearing in show many more people then the one from hours before. The media has lied over and over about trump and continue to do so. I am sure all the LIES obama and his press
Sec told got this kind of coverage. Quit acting so smart and look at the evidence. The facts are unprovable if you base them on distortions. Second most viewed inauguration in 36 years (included TV) and the media says nothing about that. Selective omission is just as dishonest. Time to grow up if you think press, press Secretaries and presidents don’t lie. It’s par for the course.

There was a man on the radio who bought up tickets for in inauguration with the intention of making a buck. He was thinking of the price of the tickets to President Obama’s inauguration….
As he was offering the tickets he could find no buyers – – -alternate fact??all sold out??

According to published reports President Donald Trump’s National Diversity Coalition, led by white attorney Michael Cohen and Pastor Darrell Scott hosted the Amer-I-Can Inauguration Party at the offices of a K-Street law firm. 35 people paid $2,500 and approximately another 150 paid $1,000 to attend. Attorney Cohen and Pastor Scott pledged National Diversity Coalition financial support for legendary athlete Jim Brown’s Amer-I-Can foundation. The most recent available nonprofit tax form (2014 records) for Amer-I-Can demonstrates expenditures of $271,553, including $138,634 in salaries and $129,332 in expenses. However, Jim Brown and his wife are said to be the only listed employees. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer outlined President Trump’s plan to curb violence and empower black communities. According to Cohen, President Trump intends to support mentoring and promote self-determination primarily through Brown’s Amer-I-Can foundation. Cohen also would not say how much money the Trump administration intends to put into the Amer-I-Can foundation, though he promised the nonprofit would see some investment.

In his Twitter profile Scott referred to himself as Dr. Darrell Scott. President Donald Trump has also referred to Scott as “Dr. Darrell Scott.” In his church bio Scott’s says: “Already a 21st Century Theologian and Scholar in his own right, Dr. Darrell went on to receive his Doctorate of Divinity in November of 2004.” That is, his bio is worded in a way that creates the impression that he earned the degree. To use the title “Dr.” is inappropriate and misleading since the degree was not earned. Compounding the problem is the questionable status of the college. St. Thomas Christian University is not accredited by any Department of Education or Council for Higher Education Accreditation recognized accrediting body. St. Thomas is currently unlicensed in the state of Florida. Mr. Scott appears to be using his degree from an unaccredited school to create an impression that he earned a doctorate.http://www.patheos.com/…/trump-transition-team-member…/

Good article.
What a pitiful effort from press room reporters to apparently not have pressed on the ‘outside advice’ re: crowd numbers – which organisation, who paid etc. Will fantasy from trump’s dark ego be this administration’s favourite think tank?

one man’s “conspiracy ” is another’s “circumstantial coincidence ”
One man’s “whiners who do nothing” are another’s “whiners who don’t do what losers who are also whining want them to do”
So far, the whining is evenly matched..

…who cares how many attended?…I may not approve all his plans…but he ditched the TPP, as a European I am mighty happy…if he follows through and will stop sending American troops abroad to destroy other countries again he will have my approval…if he will make peace with Putin also…yes at home he has very ‘Republican’ agenda…but outside America certain decision he may take are more than welcome…

You seriously are publicly wondering how the US taking oil as the spoils of war might disturb the peace? Do you imagine there would be no long-term repercussions for that sort of unprecedented behavior?

Trump is playing the MSM like plasticine in his hand. While they obsess over essential issues of national security and life and death, like how many people rode the Metro system on Friday, get crowd scientists to analyse how many people were at the inauguration, and write long articles with pictures showing that white floor coverings were actually used in 2013, not only in 2017 as Sean Spicer claimed, a whole raft of irrelevant, unimportant issues like the executive orders that Trump is making, the business leaders he is talking to, the content of those discussions, his picks for government, and the effects all of that might have on the American public or the world at large, are going largely unnoticed and unscrutinized.

Are the media really that stupid that they don’t see what his game is here?

President Trump is laughing his azz off at the media frenzy over this inane brouhaha. Meanwhile, his actual government actions are sliding under the radar of our eagle-eyed press corps. MSM idjits like Mackey keep falling for his deliberate distractions. Meanwhile, Trump can get away with just about anything, all he needs to do is generate a media frenzy (“Squirrel!!”) and go ahead with whatever he wants to get done.

I’m laughing my ass off at Trump, Spicer, Priebus, and double-laughs at Kellyanne, yet again. What started as Trump’s ego-stuffing falling out of his head over the attendance numbers, transitioned to Conway’s incredulous “alternative facts”, with the entire clan proffering threats to the media, if the media doesn’t shape-up. Seems that the MSM are covering all facets of Trump’s fallacies and indiscretions. Maybe you’re used to Breitbart?

Like the alternative facts that Russia was or wasn’t a threat four years ago. Since these folks constantly are
The disseminators of fake news I would think skepticism is warranted on everything the dying media claims. And as for Kelly
Anne Conway she destroys this idiot in the full 10 minute interview where he goes on and on and on and on about a press
Conference that doesn’t even matter. Who cares? Of course they don’t want to talk about the disaster called Obamacare or the TPP because the neolibs support those things. Keep up the good work trump if nothing else you’re exposing the farce.

the parks service actually admitted that the trump photo in that meme with the side-by-side photos, was taken much earlier in the day. the new york times reported that. my take? everyone’s lying. duh, it’s politics

Sorry, try again! Too many time-lapse videos of the event have been provided showing a LOW turn-out. So convincing is the evidence, that Spicer is now downplaying attendance numbers and instead saying there were huge TV and streaming audiences. Spicer is now downplaying the importance of employment statistics, so I suppose any day we’ll be hearing the national unemployment rate is a record low of 1%.

It is now time for they news media including The Intercept to cut the you know what with BS stories on Trump. Last night about 1/4 of the country loss homes, live and all world goods. And you people keep up this silly BS on how many people danced on the head of the Mall. It means nothing it just makes the media and I mean. The Intercept. look like a school child that I have a better anything they you.
Who care how many people attended the Obama, inauguration? You seem so happy he had more but with that we got 8 years of war currently bombing 8 counties and not one banker arrested or jailed. If the news media didn’t sell itself to the Clintons, crook that she is, and covered how she cheated Sanders out of the chance to run we would not have to put us with Trump’s silly crap. No, I did not vote for support Trump but if anybody got him into the position of President it was media. You know Russia did it.

Humm me thinks this is a lefty plant acting retarded to try and mudddy the real issues. Similar to many co-oped events we’ve seen in the past and a tactic the left employees on a regular basis like the bait and switch that was on display this weekend during the Soros feminazi march.

Good point. Mackey treated Trump’s campaign as a futile sideshow, thereby all but endorsing Clinton. In Greenwald’s reporting he took a more balanced approach, pointing out that both candidates were flawed. If these two viewpoints are representative for the Intercept, the publication would still lean towards HRC as the prefered candidate.

As such I prefer the position of progressive comedian Jimmy Dore who was vehemently against HRC, arguing that from a foreign policy point of view, the US would be better off with Trump. This would benefit the democratic party in the long run, prompting a return to it’s role as a part for the working and middle class.

Who cares if it was empty or jam packed. What matters now is that President Trump has just signed an executive order to withdraw the US fro the TPP. This will safeguard huge numbers of US workers jobs.

Trump cares. Or he wouldn’t have gotten his staff to protect his fragile ego from reality.

Me? I normally wouldn’t care if it was 2 million people or just two cheering him. I do, however, care a whole lot more about the government lying to us. On Day 1. On the most trivial fucking matters. All to protect the President’s fee-fees.

It’s possible his/her point was that this particular lie is laughable and insignificant for a number of reasons so the media’s time would be much better spent dissecting/disproving one of Donald Trump’s many other and much more significant lies.

I don’t necessarily agree with him/her, but it’s a fair point.

As the article emphasizes, Trump provides no shortage of lies to debunk so why spend so much time on something that, in itself, has no impact and is recognized as a lie by 99.9 percent of people outside Trump’s most delusional supporters?

Here are Trump’s promises that AP claims he promised to do on ‘day one’. Many of them, like reversing Obama’s executive orders are indeed ‘day one’ promises. Others are things he promised to accomplish as a president. Obviously, he can’t possibly deport all criminal illegals (aren’t all illegals criminal simply because they crossed our border without our permission?) on ‘day one’.

There may be one or 2 of these I don’t agree with and maybe one or 2 that don’t go far enough but… we shall see.

IMMIGRATION:

-Stop all federal funding to “sanctuary cities” – places where local officials don’t arrest or detain immigrants living in the country illegally for federal authorities.

-Begin deporting what Trump estimates to be more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants living in the country.

-Cancel visas for citizens of foreign countries that won’t take those criminal illegal immigrants back.

-Immediately terminate former President Barack Obama’s “two illegal executive amnesties.” That presumably includes DACA, which protects people who were brought into the country illegally as children.

-Begin working on an “impenetrable physical wall” along the southern border.

-Ask Congress to pass “Kate’s Law,” which would increase penalties on people who unlawfully re-enter the United States after being removed.

SECURITY AND DEFENSE:

-Immediately suspend the Syrian refugee program.

-Convene his generals and inform them that they have 30 days to submit a new plan for defeating the Islamic State group.

-Suspend immigration from “terror-prone regions” where he says vetting is too difficult.

-Implement new “extreme” immigration vetting techniques.

TRADE:

-Announce his intention to renegotiate or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

-Formally withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

-Direct his treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator.

DRAINING THE SWAMP and GOVERNMENT REFORM:

-Propose a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

-Ban White House and congressional officials from becoming lobbyists for five years after they leave the government.

-Ban former White House officials from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments for the rest of their lives.

-Ban foreign lobbyists from raising money for U.S. elections.

-Impose a hiring freeze on federal employees, excluding military, public safety, and public health staff.

-Impose a requirement that for every new federal regulation imposed, two existing regulations be eliminated.

ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

-Remove any Obama-era roadblocks to energy projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline.

-Lift restrictions on mining coal and drilling for oil and natural gas.

-Cancel payments to the U.N.’s climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.

HEALTH CARE, GUN CONTROL AND OTHER ISSUES:

-Cancel “every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.”

-Ask Congress to send him a bill to repeal and replace Obama’s signature health care law.

As I’ve hypothesized before, there is a method to Trump’s tweets. Whenever he finds the noose of news lowering over his thick orange neck, he takes to Twitter to change the subject. The more outrageous and self-serving (or should I say “self-dealing”?) the tweets are, the better his results.

On Saturday, the obvious news peg for the press was well-attended protests against his inauguration in Washington, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere in the world. So Trump sent his press secretary out to essentially speak one of his tweets by falsely stating that “the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period” viewed the Trump event. In doing so, Trump-Spicer snipped the peak off of the protest coverage by making muddy what was clear about the audience size. […] as you contemplate the truth value of his statement, you begin to forget about the massive scale of the anti-Trump protests.

Rather than tying itself up in knots over the Trump obfuscations, the press would be wiser to stop thinking of him as the outlier liar and the worst enemy the press has ever known and come to view him as a politician whose behavior is different only in degree, not in kind. Consider the Obama presidency. As former Politicos Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote in 2013 in a piece titled, “Obama, the Puppet Master,” he was “a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.” Obama didn’t camouflage the news with tweets or with shameless posturing in front of the CIA’s wall of martyrs as Trump did on Saturday, […] Obama […] took “old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting).” In doing so, “Media across the ideological spectrum [were] left scrambling for access.”

I don’t recall anybody calling for a boycott of Barack Obama or his myrmidons for his media scheming and for tipping the “balance of power between the White House and press … unmistakably toward the government,” […] The press mostly carried on, threading the thicket of treacheries as best it could. Governments always have and will always impede the press from doing their job, and they will use any means necessary. “All governments lie,” as journalist I.F. Stone once wrote, “but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

If Trump’s ulterior motive was to tweet-bomb the protests out of view, it seems to have blown-up in his face, and left powder burns on Spicer, Conway, and Priebus. There was massive media coverage of the Women’s March. The inaugural attendee count was fortuitously over-shadowed by Chuck Todd’s coercion of Kellyanne Conway’s providing fodder with her “alternative facts”. I suspect what has been said all along, that Donald can’t resist tiny, sparkly objects that offend him.

BTW – Trump has been pestilent for decades according to those in the know. The advent of Twitter allowed his umbrage an immediate expression, which he can’t seem to resist. Review his old tweets, the ones from years ago…they are just as inflammatory and recursive as extant. I think you are giving him too much credit for smoke-screening. He has been consistently obnoxious as a business person, reality TV “star”, and politician.

I give him no credit at all for anything. I don’t waste my time on Trump tweets, only seeing what might get linked by someone I do follow on twitter.

What Shafer – not me – is saying is (paraphrasing), to the extent that the media focuses on these kinds of side issues, they are not covering other, more important stuff. So, to the extent that journalists waste time on Trump’s twitter, or that of his followers (of whatever political stripe) etc, they are giving shrift to distractions, whether or not that is an actual goal of the fluffery.

So, to the extent that journalists waste time on Trump’s twitter, or that of his followers (of whatever political stripe) etc, they are giving shrift to distractions, whether or not that is an actual goal of the fluffery.

Exactly. To be diverted into fighting the Battle of the Crowd Count is both to play Trump’s game and to do a disservice to the world by failing to devote that time, space and energy to issues that actually matter.

Whatever Trump does is ‘not good’ and we’ll all live to be sorry about it. And, of course, Trump would never-ever do anything that displeased Putin. We all know that it’s so because of the 17 intelligence agencies.

If you’re of a certain age, Little Golden Books were a childhood staple for learning how to read, featuring the tales of characters like Scuffy the Tugboat and the Saggy Baggy Elephant.

But after President Donald Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts” in reference to misinformation, internet user Tim O’Brien decided to project how young kids might learn about such “facts” through the iconic children’s book.

“The Little Golden Book of Alternate Facts,” Photoshopped to resemble many of the other covers in the series, features common household objects and animals, each labeled with an entirely different noun. A picture of a chair is labeled “table,” an egg is called “soup,” and in a nod to Trump’s Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin, a carrot is labeled with his last name.

How could this be used to illustrate fake news…? Mr Mackey does a good job but does he stop to consider that these two different mall attendance figures also display just how many slaves to centralized fossil oil and electricity grid consumers are present. Now, based upon our latest technology that turns all these people into energy producers how would this make Mr. Mackey look? How would the lack of this informational point in this article be used?

Well… whatever you got there in your pics, it doesn’t change the FACT that the Trump or rather ‘we’ trounced the Clintons and her cultists and he is about to dismantle most or a large chunk of O’Bomba’s sorry legacy. That may not make America ‘great again’ but, given the decreased likelihood of a nuke exchange with the Russkies and the decreased likelihood that we are going to spend a few more trillions on a few more stoopid wars like we did when Clinton the rapist, DubleCrap the Animal (think George the Animal of Wrestling fame) or O’Bomba the O’Bomber were our beloved elected and, sadly RE-elected presidents.

Nice try, Arth. You won’t convince anybody that you weren’t a tried and true Dumbya supporter who voted for him both times. Your deflective post is pathetic on its face so I won’t waste more time addressing it further.

I did vote for O’Bomba the first time around. In fact, I even switched to the Demos so that I could vote for him – more like against Hillary – in the primary.

On the other hand, you WILL be gnashing teeth for the next 4-8 years, possibly longer. And, face it, the Clintons ARE going to die soon and, before that, they’ll be aging disgracefully. Have you seen Billy’s face lately?

I get entertainment reading the comments sections here on The Intercept.

It’s great fun watching all the pro Russia pro tRump folks twist up into knots making excuses and attempting to divert (Hillary) as their beloved tRump sinks deeper and deeper into his earned and deserved narcissistic induced psychosis.

Like most comment sections, the pro-Russia trolls have completely taken over. I suppose when you blame your job being taken away by unskilled foreigners, you have a lot of time on your hands to spend commenting on the Internet.

love trump? naw he’s almost as bad as clinton, in many ways. thankfully, she lost, so the risk of a war with russia has declined. doubling down on the “russia hacked the campaign” nonsense doesn’t really further progressive goals, though. it’s important to focus on fighting trump where it matters, on climate change, deregulation and on corruption, not on maintaining the dnc’s control of the party.

the battle between trump and the press, and the intelligence community (assuming those are different battles), while entertaining, is also worrisome, like earth tremors in a fault zone. the mighty wurlitzer has been turned on trump, to a degree i haven’t seen before , not even carter’s experience compares, and only 2 days into his term.

Yeah but you’ll be gnashing teeth for at least the next 4 if not 8 years because, entertaining as the pro Russia pro tRump folks excuses may be, tRump will continue to be the elected prez and the Hillary cult will grow increasingly irrelevant as the young generation views old Bill and old Hilly as the irrelevant and corrupt past.

I love how when a lie from Trump is exposed beyond your ability to cast doubt on it, you immediately invoke the Clintons as if they’re at all relevant anymore.

Sorry, the election is over. Your guy has to stand on his own now without comparing himself to one of the most disliked politicians in modern history who still managed to win the popular vote (though you’ll still try to invalidate that with vague comments about New York, California, or unverified illegal voters)

Why would I try to invalidate… WHAT? with New York, California or unverified illegal voters?

There’s is one ‘valid’ way to elect the president in the United States and it’s described in the US Constitution. Sure, Clinton could get a participation medal for ‘winning the popular vote’, there’s nothing wrong with that.

You DO understand that if the criteria for winning the election ‘by popular vote’ both candidates would have ran very different campaigns, don’t you? You would have seen both spending a lot of time in Texas, California and New York and very little time in New Hampshire or Maine. Trump would have rallied in Jersey City and LA while Clinton would have been spotted every other week in Dallas.

So… Hillary lost. She got trounced because she lost 30 states and that’s that. But, again, I don’t mind she getting a participation medal.

This was exercise in hyperbole at worst. Hopefully they learn from it. It signals that Trump is prideful, not necessarily a pathological liar like Clinton who the Intercept and Mackey trusted to be the president (despite her admitted shortcomings).

But then again, hopefully Trump will not get away with any lies like Clinton and Obama, aka Barry Soetoro got away with. The latter even produced a forgery of a birth certificate according to the police.

For the true believers, this has done nothing to shatter the conviction that “birtherism” is heresy.

“The latter even produced a forgery of a birth certificate according to police.”

Oh, by police you mean ex-Sheriff Arapio? The proof he provided was that the typeface on another birth certificate from around the same time (and no one will say how or where this other certificate was obtained) was similar to the typeface on Obama’s.

So, uh, no. If you think that’s anything even close to evidence, you may as well believe all the unverified intelligence allegations against Trump, since those are just as shoddy. But you would never do that, since your confirmation bias won’t allow it.

Are you a character from 1984? Getting people to accept the government issued “alternative facts” despite evidence to the contrary is a key part of that story. Besides, this isn’t even about the media, it’s about a damn webcam or some random guy filming things on his camera – they all show the same thing.

It’s what CNN calls a gigapixel. It’s a panorama 360 photo of the inauguration. I am no expert on crowds but it looks like a large crowd and certainly not like the photo that the Washington post has published which I think might have been taken a couple of hours before the event began.

I do see a big difference between Makey’s shots and this one. Well, I guess each publication, the Intercept included, needs some stupid (as opposed to subtle) liar. That should make everybody else look… better?

“……..But given how important accurate statistics and evidence from the United States government are to science, the economy and our society, it is worth laying out clearly that Spicer’s claims about the inauguration are contradicted by evidence available to anyone with the power of sight………”

Is it, Mr. Mackey? In my opinion, it’s simply a waste of time. Trump is a pathological liar. He has been lying since he entered the Presidential race. His supporters have never shown any inclination to care because he is carrying a message to a part of the American population that has been marginalized by the political establishment. The same phenomenon is happening in Europe. In Europe it has not taken the rantings of a chronic liar to build a populist revolt against the political establishment – like in France. The advance of the far right in Europe is breathtaking.

You are far better off to look at Trump’s policy rather than waste a lot of time proving what everyone already proved eons ago about Trump. Policy is what matters. What is Trump going to do in Ukraine, Syria, the Middle East, Jerusalem and Africa? How is Trump going to negotiate trade with China and Mexico? What is Trump going to do about NATO? Is Trump going to just ignore the obvious interference in the US elections by not only Russia, but by the discredited Assange as well? These are real and important policies which affect Americans and world relations.

Trump definitely has a political agenda, but he is always going to portray himself (and his supporters) as fighting the political and media establishment – and he is going to lie to advance his agenda.

Step 1: Lie about what you’re doing.
Step 2: When the media disproves the lie, then blame the media as ‘being against you’.
Step 3: Start new lie.

The first and latest lie about the 1.5M people is simply a perfect example of Corporate CEO thinking. Not new at all. He tells his people (subordinates) what the number is, and then pushes forward. This is what is known as Top Down management.

In Trump’s mind, it doesn’t register or even matter that the Media tells the facts. The facts are irrelevant at this point to him. He’s in office and the voters cannot do anything about it now.

Even reporting on the policy as you suggest won’t matter to him. In his mind, he has 4 years to do whatever the hell he wants. Or so he thinks.

It’ll be interesting to see which line has to be crossed before Congress opposes him.

Corporate CEOs are limited by earnings. They must explain losses to potential investors (with a lot of complications, of course). Otherwise I agree. The assessment by the intelligence community that Russia interfered in our election will be the first test for Congress since Trump wants to restart relations with Putin. Pressure will be on the Republicans since no one needs to convince the Democrats.

Completely false Orville, but that’s irrelevant to what US Intelligence has ALREADY concluded. So it’s a moot point below the line at the Intercept. I’ve posted enough links already to establish that very strong likelihood that Russian intel hacked the DNC. The real question is where is the smoking gun that the Russians handed over the emails to WikiLeaks? There is no smoking gun that we know of, but based on the threat to Russian interests that HRC posed – and the improvement of relations with Russia promised by Trump – it’s really not a big jump to Putin ordered the hack to help elect Trump……not very big indeed.

The fundamental problem with post-truth is that people are willing to believe nearly anything that validates their preconceptions. Take any outlandish claim about Russia, for example, among Dems. It’s not clear how this problem could be tackled in an effective way.

Agree I felt it was a silly fight but that does not negate all other fake news. It’s sad that the people can’t open their minds enough to hear the message but if people cont to watch CNN MSNBC they will stay ignorant to the facts and just bitch alot

“It’s not clear how this problem could be tackled in an effective way.”

I think the idea of a Representative form of government was designed to overcome the mental short-comings of the masses.
If we had honest, intelligent, people in government …
instead we have AIPAC guiding humanity to a brighter tomorrow.

There are plenty of sources whose liberalism (and anti-Trumpism) is not in doubt who have expressed skepticism of the Russia claims. People like Glenn Greenwald, Ted Rall, Mark Ames (also a Russia expert), Michael Tracy, and the people of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity all have debunked the conspiracy theories around Russia. The same can be said of numerous neutral technology experts. Point out those sources and promote those sources, and the case for hacking evaporates.

Clark didn’t ‘whatabout’. He only noted that many Hillary cultists now passionate critics of Trump – if you want to call the anti-Trump hysteria ‘critique’ – appear to be dishonest hypocrites who are unbothered by their. own object of worship flaws. Which kind of turns THEM into objects of derision and ridicule.

When Mr. Trump speaks, he creates his own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—he’ll tweet again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.

Mr. Mussolini, it’s probably safe to suspect that most of Hillary’s cultists and Hillary agree with your theory. Which explains why many of them continue and will continue to believe that IN FACT it was Hillary who won the election which is too funny.
Seriously.

His reckoning with stubborn reality is long overdue, but it might not come until those around him stop flattering him and tell him the truth.

This is the problem for Trump.

He surrounds himself with people who don’t tell the truth because, if the people around him did tell him the truth, he would have to face many unpleasant facts (not the least of which is his unsuitability as president.)

Trump built myth upon myth about himself (e.g., pretending to be someone else praising Trump or the garish Trump imprimaturs he slaps on everything he sells.) He dare not disturb those myths he has fabricated; he must reinforce them.

Trump is a fraud.

He knows this.

But worse, much worse, Trump cannot hire people — or even work with people — who know this. Thus he hires sycophants like Lewandowski and Spicer as well as members of his own family.

This consistent need for sycophants — those who sustain his mythology — has one huge categorical exception: clever manipulative people who unscrupulously use him to obtain their own goals. ( e.g., Putin, Stern, most of the Republican Party, Pence, Tillerson and others.)

Thus, instead of talking about reality (which is what POTUS should do) the country and the world will be flummoxed by these peripheral disputes — essential to maintaining Trump’s fabrications but destructive of consistent policy, effective governance, and common purpose.

To a certain extent this applies to every politician but Trump represents a new degree of this“Potemkinism” — one as old as politics but as modern as tweets. Specifically the authoritarian who so craves deceit in order validate himself that any opposition will become a treasonous act. Every late night tweet will remind us of his narcissism. We saw this in Nixon, in Stalin, in Idi Amin, and even in that African guy who vowed to be president for a billion years. Reality is their enemy; but their pettiness becomes State policy, people suffer.

It is a central trait of all tinpot despots.

Trump has expressed this definitive grandiosity numerous times already:

For instance (at random):

I’m the only one who can fix our problems.

“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”

“I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

“All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology,” said ol’ Carl Sagan. I predict we have much, much more bad math to come, and very soon.

Great piece. However, is it fair to single out Trump and the Republican base for relying on skewed sources? Frankly the behaviour of Trump and his staff just seems like a (slightly) less sophisticated version of the behaviour exhibited by Clinton and her team during the election, for example repeating demonstrable falsehoods even after they had been thoroughly debunked:http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/04/politics/hillary-clinton-email-claim/index.html

It would be comforting to believe that Trump was an anomaly in his disregard for objective truth, but it would underestimate the problem

i completely agree. anyone remember the Terry Gross interview of Clinton, when Terry asked if Clinton had “evolved” on the subject of gay marriage? Clinton hit the roof.

once again, i think we really should examine the many and various ways in which Trump merely presents the political/media circus with a mirror, demonstrating unabashedly the routine, accepted behaviors and mannerisms in raw form. there may be a difference in scale or style, but there is no difference in essential character.

I hadn’t but I just listened to it now. Amazing. It’s not just the lies, it’s the parts that don’t even make sense on her own terms…
Q: Have you changed your mind about gay marriage?
A: “I think I’m an American.”

What on earth does she think she means? It’s like she’s too conflicted even to keep the lies straightforward. At least Trump commits wholeheartedly to his fibs. Or does that make him worse? So confused.

Indeed. A lot of Clinton defenders are more than willing to present “alternative facts” to factual problems around her.
As a side note- what if the media compared Trump’s turnout not with Obama, but with George W. Bush? That way, any claims of liberal bias (except from those who think Bush was liberal (!)) could be ruled out. (Washington Metro may have been the only outlet to do so, pointing out that ridership was higher when Bush was sworn in the second time.)

“It looked honestly – it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on the thing, and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people. Now that’s not bad, but it’s a lie,” Trump said.

This story is much more persuasive than the others I saw about the same thing. It’s not just that the spokesman lied about the numbers — he lied about the attendance on the ground and the subway traffic and the white sheets and the security precautions! Which is the difference between a plausible mistake and just plain contemptibility. The same guy is going to come out in two months and say Iran is secretly making a nuclear weapon and I expect various countries to start sending them surface-to-air missiles for self-defense without even looking too hard to see how the Trump administration is lying that time.

Much ado about nothing! The Democratic leaning press seems to be falling all over themselves reporting any negativity they can find about Trump. I would advise holding your fire and wait until the appropriate moment to unload. There will be plenty to come, so stopping wasting your breath on trivia.

it is trivial. which is why it’s so insane to see Spicer reading that diatribe, awkwardly trying to keep his place on the piece of paper he’s reading from while maintaining the shrill tone. coupled with the threats Conway made continuously to members of the press that if they didn’t get in line they’d lose “access” . . . in other words, do as you’re told.

If you’ve spent a lifetime happily swallowing the “alternative facts” of religion, having faith in Donald Trump is not much of a cognitive leap. Apparently political rhetoric is just a “non-overlapping magisterium” — separate from reality.

It’s always about perspective. From the CNN shot you can still see the gaps that are visible in the other shots, thought I’m sure there is a difference in the time of day the shots are taken in order to reinforce whomever’s agenda is at stake. Adding to that the angle at which the shots are taken to emphasize either the immensity or the lack thereof a crowd.

Honestly who cares how many people showed up? It’s likely no one has an exact number.

Why don’t we get to what’s really important?

Where are major human rights balances going to fall?
Where is the trajectory of his military foreign policy going to lead us?
What does religious freedom mean going forward?
What is the social impact of his leadership on the younger generations and how will that affect the future?

President Trump is going to be scrutinized with a ferocity that we’ve never seen before because he is widely unpopular and has to execute an agenda that is poised to only make matters worse. So let’s cut the bullshit. There were fewer people because actions have consequences.

“Totalitarian politics?—?far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist?—?use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value?—?the reality of class struggle, for instance, or the interest conflict between Jews and their neighbors?—?have all but disappeared.”

The problem will be when Trump and his minions eliminate all the federal organizations (such as Bureau of Labor Statistics and NOAA) that currently gather and disseminate statistics about our country and the world.